The present invention relates generally to a method for representing a plurality of nodes in a network. In particular, the present invention relates to a method for creating a data structure for representing the nodes in the network.
Presently, data structures such as adjacency lists and edge lists are used to represent networks. However, in such data structures, adjacency information is stored separately for each node. In other words, information relating to adjacent nodes in the network is stored individually for each node. This often results in redundancy of information. Further, updating the data structures may involve a significant processing overhead since adjacency information may need to be updated for more than one node. Also, there is a potential risk of data inconsistency if data is not updated properly. In addition, the data structures need to be traversed sequentially to determine whether one node is adjacent or connected to another node in the network, resulting in an increase in processing time. Furthermore, these data structures do not conform to a real world representation of the network; therefore visualization of the network through such data structures is difficult.
In light of the discussion above, there is a need to reduce redundancy of data while representing networks through a data structure. Further, there is a need to minimize processing overhead while updating the data structure. Also, the data structure must not necessitate sequential traversal for determining connections between the nodes in the networks.